The Heart

The heart is an amazing muscle. It is responsible for keeping us alive. My three year old likes to lay her head on my chest sometimes, and listen to my heart beat...She calls its sound the "heart fart"...She's a classy girl like that. I am undeniably proud. She likes to draw little hearts (poorly, but I know what they are...It's a Momma's job to know) and tell me that the little hearts are all her love for me, and it's flying all around...For as much as the heart does for keeping the blood pumping through our body, keeping us alive, we don't often credit it for that amazing work. More often, like children, we credit it for acting as the keeper of our emotions. Admittedly, I can be a bit of a drama queen, but I am actually quite a pragmatist. I seek out the logical explanations for things. I like to look at the science of something. Generally speaking, I can't believe something is real unless you can prove it to me. So, for me, my heart wasn't anything more than a self-contained, constantly exercising entity. It needed no input or direction from me...It did it's own thing. Describing my heart in terms of emotional jargon never seemed appropriate coming from me, unless I was using my oft quoted phrase, "black like my heart". Now, don't misunderstand, I am not cold or cruel, and I do not believe myself to truly have a black heart. It's just not really in my outward nature to offer up my proverbial emotional heart for what ever sacrifice is deemed necessary. I guess I have always though it was too childish, or might lead to some embarrassment on my part, something I hate...

Lately, however, I have been wondering if the child-like representation of the heart might be more accurate than I had previously assumed. I have said before in this blog, that sometimes I am overwhelmed by my capacity to love. I would lay down my life for my children, my love for them is limitless, and I have loved other people in my life deeply and with much passion...But I am not sure that I had loved with my full heart. Maybe I was stuck between being too old to remember how it was done as a child, and too young to know how it should be done as an adult. I think that perhaps now I am unstuck. My heart is a capable muscle, yes, but it seems that it may also be a capable haven. A haven for the heart of another. A heart that I can hear and feel physically, but that I can also feel emotionally. It's amazing to me to think of the cavity within my chest as a safe-place for not only my emotions, but those which are not mine. And safe they are. Because in both pragmatism and emotionalism, my heart is nothing if it isn't strong. And although the defenses around it are built solidly and with fortitude, I can lower those defenses to let this other heart in. It seems that I have more than enough room in my own heart...Who knew.

I think I am on a literary bent. The second post this week with a poem. Next thing you know I will be wearing a beret, drinking a tiny coffee, and smoking a cigarette in some back-alley beatnik bookshop...Nah, I don't look so good in berets, I really do look much better in a fedora.

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings